OnLive demoed: lag, graphics are a problem

Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective puts the OnLive streaming game service to the …

OnLive promises nothing less than the moon and the stars: the service wants to stream games to you via your laptop or lower-end computer on their own proprietary hardware. We've seen tech demos and speeches at shows, but how does it work in practice? Ryan Shrout, from the website PC Perspective, had the fine luck to have access to the beta, and he has shared his thoughts with the world. No surprise: lag is an issue, as are graphics.

Running the games was just as easy on the system as promised. "You are seeing OnLive running Burnout: Paradise on my local system using just under 60MB of memory and anywhere from 4-7 percent of the CPU power," Shrout wrote. "My system is running on a Core i7-860 so that is a bit lower than the total system consumption you'll see on slower systems, but that is obviously much lower CPU horsepower than would be required to play these types of games locally." In terms of bandwidth, the system was using around 1Mb/s.

The games were running at 1280 by 720, and the expected issues became reality. "The input lag on UT3 was so noticeably bad with the mouse and keyboard that I would call [the] game simply unplayable. I often found myself overshooting the mouse movement by half a screen, moving well past my intended target because the cursor didn't stop when I did."

The problem wasn't nearly as bad when played with an Xbox 360 controller, but Shrout found the graphics were sharper when played locally. The graphics aren't anything to phone home about, the lag was noticeable, and the resolution wasn't set very high. When something sounds too good to be true... that's usually a hint about the final product.

Of course, there is one large gotcha here: "I first have to admit that I don't actually have a beta account with the OnLive service; instead a friend of a friend of a friend passed to me their login information after I requested it in order to write a preview of the technology. Why is this a note-worthy point to make? There is a chance that OnLive is only selecting beta members that are on ISPs close to their current data centers and as I live outside that area that could affect my experiences with cloud-based gaming." So there is that aspect to the writeup.

Be sure to read the whole writeup for all the details. And now an honest question: is anyone surprised?

112 Reader Comments

The lag concerns alone should have made this whole idea stillborn from the start. The idea that someone was apparently duped into funding the development of a technology whose shortcomings and failures could be predicted by ANYONE versed in the realities of the Internet is both pityful and laughable.

This is the case...for now. Services like this may not work right now, but as bandwidth improves, number of data centers spread out, and average distance-to-server goes down services like this will just get better.

One look at that website tells you what they are dealing with. Tier 1 interconnects have 1ms - 90+ms latency. In reality, users see much more than this over the entire segment connecting their computer to the source. Input is one of those things that you cannot reliably predict so prediction algorithms that help mask latency don't really apply to it which should have made the idea stop before it got started.

That said, I am glad someone tried it. If they could have solved the latency issue, a whole new market would open up and that is a good thing. I'm glad people are taking these chances because no matter how much this might not succeed, the industry will learn something from it and be better off because of it.

Originally posted by PerfectCr:All the commenters at Engadget are upset and attacking PCPerspective for this story.

There's a shock. Most of the commenters at Engadget are idiots. Haven't used it? No big deal. Many of them are probably the same ones that are SURE that they know EXACTLY what the Apple Tablet is and why it will be revolutionary.

Pre-conceived notion seems to be reality for more and more people these days.

Is that megabit or megabyte? If it's the latter, most of the country is already screwed. Fastest service in my area is 6Mb (around the 800KB/sec range). Nowhere near enough for even a paltry 1280x720 experience with gratuuitous lag. Why would I want this service when I can play a game like Burnout Paradise with zero lag on my current machine (which isn't a beast at all) at 1920x1200?

Until latency can be drastically reduced, things like On Live are pointless.

The PS3 has a remote play feature with the PSP. Where you can play certain PS3 games on the PSP. So, the actual game processing is being done on the PS3, and the video and game control is on the PSP. I remember trying the PS1 game Crash Bandicoot with remote play. I found the latency to make the game unplayable and the PS3 was in the same room as the PSP.

I am interested in this technology, but only on a LAN. My idea for this technology would be let me run the game on my computer and when a friend comes over he can bring a laptop and play the game with me. My computer runs the game and I stream it to him.

Anyone who has ever VNC'd into a system would know that input lag is unavoidable, even at 1024x768 on a local connection.

If I can't get remote control of my Ubuntu server on my LAN without input lag then how a service like OnLive hopes to offer anything more demanding than Minesweeper or Peggle any time in the near future is beyond me.

Meanwhile, anything above 3Mbps DSL connections are often extortionately expensive in many countries, on top of the caveats of line contention and "your mileage may vary".

As a proud system-building enthusiast and PC gamer I frankly hope to see OnLive go down the drain, as I'd really prefer that my chosen geeky passions don't become even more niche than they already are.I'll stick with playing UT3 locally on maxed settings, 1920x1200 and 60ms client<->server lag, thanks.

At least maybe OnLive could mean you won't need a beefy machine to render Final Fantasy XV? Turn-based and menu-based games could still benefit; those aren't so succeptible to lag and can feature lots of prerendered cutscenes...

The lag, I think everyone knew was going to be a problem. But it's really only a big problem for twitch games like UT3. I don't see any reason the service can't be used for many other types of games.

I am curious about his graphics gripe though. From the start they said the games would be streamed at modest resolution, to keep bandwidth use down. There's already going to be some fuzziness from a local game running 1280x720 scaled up to 1920x1200 for LCD screens, and I'm sure whatever compression they're using is going to degrade that even farther.

My guess is this service isn't for people who have a capable gaming system and all the games they want to play ready to load onto it. It's for people who want to do some quick dailies/quests in WoW on their commute to/from work when all they have is their iPhone. Or people who want to sit back in their lay-z-boy and play some games on their Wii/360/PS3 that aren't actually available on the system(s).

Look, this is a good idea. It's just too early by at least a decade or two due to the technology it requires (ubiquitous, dependable, very-high-latency-and-bandwidth internet connections).

Some of the issues could be minimized if this was a service offered directly by ISPs to users closely colocated with their server farms, but I seriously doubt that Comcast et al are ready or willing to give that a shot.

He was using someone else's beta login and the software warned him he was on a high latency connection and people are jumping all over this as proof the service doesn't work!

Honestly a PC enthusiast website are not exactly the crowd I imagine OnLive are going after, the author goes on about why its better running games locally with 8xAA and other graphics fetish stuff that general consumers wouldn't give a dam about. This service will never win over hardcore PC tech/gamers as it pretty much does away with the reasons for their hobby.

I'd keep an open mind on it at least until it goes public. It may not be perfect for every game but might be good enough for most.

"Every time I connected from my area, this is the warning I got:We have detected a high latency connection to the internet that may result in slow responsiveness"

So, he's stolen a beta key, violated the NDA, and ran from a location with too much latency for good performance (in a closed limited beta environment), and it does not play twitch games well? Why is this news?

We have been saying that would be a problem the entire time. However, the early "reports" were that they were playing with someone across great distances without any noticible lag. I'll say now what I said then. There are a lot of ways such a demo can be faked, and they have all been used before. Previous people have shown off demo's of such things as dreams are made of, with boxes filled with unconnected junk. I'm not saying he did fake it (or that he didn't) but when it goes from "no noticible lag" to "overshooting my target by half a screen" then I'd say something has changed. To be honest, a lot of trade show demo's are cheating in order to drum up support. If SF4 promised online play with no lag, you'd be suspicious, but when this guy promises that he could pipe your commands to his server and pipe back the rendered screen with no lag, how did you swallow that?

Originally posted by Ben Kuchera:I added a paragraph about his geographic location. There is still SOME hope for the service, but I remain incredibly skeptical.

I had a really good conversation with one of their head network engineers at PAX about this exact problem. Basically, this is being positioned to be sold as an add-on to your broadband setup, and they're intending to colo with the ISP to provide the hardware to connect to. They've already got contracts with some big ISPs, so I imagine right now they're just trying to get the build-out done.

Lag shouldn't be an issue if that's the case. In my town (Madison, WI) I've got around 8-10ms round trip to Chicago, and I can hit other Madison ISPs in <4ms, so if you have the hardware relatively local, there's no reason this shouldn't work. I've seen full-motion 1080p video perform wonderfully over a 4mbps connection, so I have to think, assuming they have the hardware to throw enough cycles at it, they're be able to achieve similiar results.

"Every time I connected from my area, this is the warning I got:We have detected a high latency connection to the internet that may result in slow responsiveness"

So, he's stolen a beta key, violated the NDA, and ran from a location with too much latency for good performance (in a closed limited beta environment), and it does not play twitch games well? Why is this news?

This!

Ben, you should preface the piece with the fact that the "reviewer" wasn't using the system anywhere close to the intended use case. With that taken into account any talk about lag in the review is completely invalid, which basically your entire article pointless since that is all it focuses on.

This is exactly why the beta was closed and limited. The people who run OnLive are not stupid, and they know the limitations of there service (as you can see from the automated warnings). As such they are carefully rolling it out as they build the infracstructure to provide a good experience.

"Every time I connected from my area, this is the warning I got:We have detected a high latency connection to the internet that may result in slow responsiveness"

So, he's stolen a beta key, violated the NDA, and ran from a location with too much latency for good performance (in a closed limited beta environment), and it does not play twitch games well? Why is this news?

This is kind of what I was wondering, lag gets worse over distance, he is outside the area that OnLive are prepared to serve and writes a "review" complaining about the lag. It's a system designed to be run on low end machines when running locally isn't really an option, yet he tests it on a core i7. If you own a gaming machine, this product isn't targeted at you, it's aimed at low end machines which can't run the games. When the options are spending $1000 on a gaming machine or no games at all, the graphics would probably be far more acceptable.

And even still, gameplay wasn't bad on burnout and hawx, acceptable for what one would expect from the service. Being closer would reduce lag and make it pretty good.

The biggest reason I'm glad that Onlive has this failing is the service it represents. I LIKE having physical media, or at least decent control over my games. The few downloaded games I have are with companies who have no qualms about letting me re-download them to my machine.

Onlinve on the other hand, lets you shell out money for a subscription that is only valid for a set amount of time...or until they decide it is no longer feasible to be running the game. The older the game, the bigger the chance you would go to play it one day and simply find it not there. No thanks. I'll play what I want, not what some suit or financial analyst somewhere declares it profitable for me to play.

The problem is the same regardless of how many localized services you set up. The last mile is the slowest part of the internet.

MMO's which traditionally have the most lag due to either internet hiccups, server latency or texture loading from a local drive will suffer far greater a death if you tried to stream video and command data on a 3G connection from an iPhone.

You may have seen full 1080p video streaming off a 4mbps connection however thinking through that comparison you would have realized that video isn't a realtime application - you can buffer it so that realtime playback can occur as long as you are loading the video faster than you are watching it.

Streaming even a 720p realtime stream and sending command data across a long multi-hop link is still a pipedream for most of us.

We can barely stream HD content in most of the country. Why anyone thought someone magically solved the internet and could stream a real-time interactive HD stream is beyond me.

As far as lag...I would say most games would be near unplayable with the service's lag. Sure, twitch games are a no-brainer, but even Mario/Mega-Man games which depend heavily on timing would suffer. Basically any game that relied on timing would suffer.

I guess I'm not sure what the actual business plan is for OnLive...it better be a cheap service. Right now all I see is a laggy service with worse graphics than my home console.

Originally posted by JabberWockey:^ @GameEnder: So what is the intended "use case"? Two blocks down from the OnLive servers?

The intended use case is being within what ever they consider to be proper range. Considering he got a latency warning *every time* he connected to the service he was not within the proper service area.

Also with just a little bit of packet sniffing and investigative work he would of been able to tell us which server he connected to, how far away it was, the actual ping to it. Of course he couldn't be bothered to, or even worse doesn't know how to do that.

I remember watching the demo they did a while back at some university. It was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever seen. They weren't even demoing it to a group of gamers, so the market talk was out in full force. The guy showing it off spoke about how 80ms and below is idea for not noticing lag and that no one would ever ping over 80ms because of how their data centers were positioned.

The whole demo was underwhelming to anyone remotely technically inclined.